Tag: non-fiction

“You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.”~Nikola Tesla

With The Handmaid’s Tale based on Margaret Atwood‘s novel of the same name hitting the screens, it is time to consider what other dystopian novels and stories one should read. I find dystopian novels and stories to be among my favorite genres of literature.

“In Russia it is always the future that is thought of. It is the crops next year, it is the comfort that will come in ten years, it is the clothes that will be made very soon. If ever a people took its energy from hope, it is the Russian people.”~John Steinbeck, A Russian Journal

Plot summary

“Steinbeck and Capa’s account of their journey through Cold War Russia is a classic piece of reportage and travel writing. Just after the Iron Curtain fell on Eastern Europe, Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union to report for the New York Herald Tribune.

“Death is a pleasure. The big D is the world’s most powerful narcotic, the ultimate anaesthetic.”~Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War

Plot summary

“In March of 1965, Marine Lieutenant Philip J. Caputo landed at Danang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history’s ugliest wars, he returned home — physically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever gone.

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Don’t you think that sometimes there isn’t enough time to read? That you’d like to leave everything else aside and only read your life away. No? Well, in that case have fun doing whatever you’ll be doing instead of reading 🙂

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”
― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

On the topic of books, I never seem to have gotten over Albert Camus’L’Étranger/The Stranger/The Outsider (1942). It was one of the first books that made me really think about what it means to be a human. The book was a compulsory read during those educating years at high school. All the signs were there to hate the book – all things mandatory made one automatically to be hesitant and mostly skeptical. But luckily there are exceptions to the rule.